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DM Notes
This is just a short hand list of notes and themes for the Broken Worlds: [] [] * It is a living setting. ** Everything is alive. Even the Dead Sky is covered in coral growths and various vermin. Include that in descriptions for immersion and world building. ** Mention briefly of ship lice scurrying away from a player's lantern. Or the coral glistening with dew. Every inch of this world is immersed in life. ** Use deepsea creatures, insects and fungus as ideas for fauna and flora. There should be no place that is devoid of all life. (I mean, within reason, there should be a reason there's no life, like it was scoured with dragonfire) * Everything is dark. ** Unless you are living in an island that happens to have a sun (the minority) most islands are lit by glowing funguses or plants. Most island chains grow their own luminescent source of life. One might use wiggling larva, the other might use fungus. ** Due to the island nature of the worlds, there is no petroleum or oil to be mined. Most pitch (for lighting torches or curing ship wood) is resin made from plants and funguses. * Magic ** Magic if prevalent in this setting but it is dangerous. Most technology relies on 90% real world tech with magic acting as ducttape between it. *** Small magics are common. The voice pipes on ships might have a minor enchantment to help the sound transfer but it is not a 'magic mouth' intercom esq spell. ** Magic is feared by the common masses. Lynches are not uncommon. *** Republic: Magic users are licensed and policed by the inquisition. A licensed wizard is functionally a noble in a gilded cage. Unlicensed wizards are hunted down. **** Osterland: A more relaxed stance on magic. They do not take kindly to the inquisition harming their mages as more of them draw their magic from dragon bloodlines and are like family. **** Widowmark: A harsh stance against magic. Any mages are captured and brought to the vampire nobility. Unchecked mages are seen as a threat to their rule. Some are kept and used as thralls, the others might be given to the inquisition as a goodwill gesture. *** Duvel Cai: Magic users are either part of the priesthood or storm chasers who capture and bind elementals. *** Vayan: Many gypsies are street magicians some use actual magic. They are a superstitious race, family members with true magic are cause for worry let they attract the wrong attention. *** Bastion: They lack the inquisition's firm hand, magic users do well to keep themselves hidden lest they find themselves on the wrong end of a pitchfork. But a few do find security in working for the crown. *** Goblins: All magic users become spider wives. The spiders take an active interest in any goblin child born with an affinity for magic. (note make special spider wife race feat so that any magic using class can take a spider familliar.) They are special to the spiders and live in the webs among them. *** O'Shaid: All snake people have some experience with magic, either working with a magic caste or being one. They do not fear them and are the most magically adept race. *** Vespers: Magic is alien to them. Psionics are heavily feared. To be a mage their host must be a mage meaning that magic users are incredibly rare. The only magic they can develop naturally is psionic utilizing their vestigial hive mind. *** [] * It is a Noble/Dark setting which is to say, heroes exist victories and loses last but people die, alot. Life is not easy in the broken worlds. It is Noble/Dark in that people can make a difference, but so few do. ** Play up the fact that there is little to no health care. There is all manner of diseases around. The most common being fungus coral growing into your skin, cured by taking a sharp knife and cutting it out (think barnacles on a whale). *** It's far worse if it starts growing in your lungs. *** Sailors have pockmarked skin where they've dug out one or two of the growths. *** Introduce a drunk who has some coral growing in his beard. ** Introduce people with eye patches, with peg legs, doctors are rare, most doctors are still in the period where they go straight from working on a corpse to delivering a baby. ** Life is uncertain, the only hope alot of poor people have for seeing any form of wealth is serving on a pirate ship. ** Pirates have gold teeth and ear rings because they expect to die and need to pay for funerals [] * It is an exotic setting ** It is a completely alien world. Introduce new and weird customs and cuisine. Introduce words and act surprised when the players don't know what they are. Have a street vendor selling fried goyle's on a stick. [] * It is a broken world. ** It's in the name, I know, but I mean it, the world is broken. It is fundamentally wrong. ** Magic is broken, reality is fluid, time is malleable. You can sail towards the great moon in the sky for generations and never get any closer but sail down for a week and find the edge of reality. ** You can sail upwards where reality is thicker, time and space become compressed, storms rage and you can travel years or leagues in an instant. ** A storm can sweep in from open sky and raise a forgotten island from the deep abyss, or maybe a lost kingdom will descend from the sky. [] * Rule of Three ** I'm trying to keep a trifold symbolism going in the game. A recurring 'three-fold truth'. *** Grandmother, Maid and the Storm *** Machine in Shadow, Machine of Spirits, Machine of Flesh *** The Great Machine, The Broken Worlds, The Arcane God **** There can totally be exceptions to the rule, but try to keep them as exceptions. **** Take magic for example: Arcane, Divine, Psionic is meant to be the threefold truth. ***** But in reality there's Arcane, Divine Faith, Divine Reality, Psionic and Parasitic (and possibly more as the game develops). ***** But, the two divines are two sides of the same coin. And the Parasitic (patron) based magic is meant to be the sole exception. Basically a fault in the mechanics exploited by a few.